Again I'm not a professional or a "Know it ALL" I have just been schooled by personal loss all too well in this life.. With this knowledge I can only hope I can offer information that may or may not help those who are looking for something that will give them direction when their world is still spinning violently around them. If what I have to say helps you who are reading this.. Then I'm very happy I have been able to help you in even one small way.

There are many misconceptions about the pain associated with significant emotional loss. Some relate to the relationship of others, for example: “It’s not fair to burden them with my pain,” or “You have to be strong for others” [mom, dad, kids, etc.]. Some relate to how we think we should be reacting to the loss, for example: “I should be over it by now,” or “I have to keep busy.”

One of the most hidden and dangerous fears is that if I ever let myself feel the pain that I sense, I will start crying and never be able to stop. It is precisely this kind of incorrect assumption that can keep us locked into a position of unresolved grief, forever. And yet, based on what we have been taught in our society, it is a most logical extension of everything we have ever learned.

We were taught from our earliest ages that sad, painful, or negative feelings were to be avoided at all cost. And if we were unable to avoid them, at least, not to show them in public. Everyone we’ve ever talked to can relate to these comments: “If you’re going to cry, go to your room, and cry alone”; “Knock off that crying or I’ll give you a reason to cry”; “Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.”

Those are just a small sampling of the kinds of remarks that could have dictated your reactions to the loss events in your life. This could also be said that many of our survival habits were developed when we were quite young, and that we may be managing adult lives with the limited skills and perceptions of a child.

If you picture a tiny infant, unhappy about something, you will realize that the infant communicates displeasure at the top of its little lungs. If you think about it, you will recall that infants also express pleasure at the top of their lungs. They make no distinction between happy and sad, in terms of volume or intensity. As children move out of infancy they are socialized to reduce both the volume and intensity of the expression of their feeling responses to life. This might be somewhat acceptable if both happy and sad were merely muted a little and muted equally. Unfortunately, only the sad side gets severely crimped. The happy, joyful, and positive feelings are allowed to stay, and can even be shared with others. The other half of our normal feeling existence is relegated to isolation, separation, and aloneness.

With all of those beliefs and habits as a backdrop, it is almost entirely logical that we might be terrified to show or express any of the normal and natural painful reactions to losses of any kind. It even makes sense that we might believe that if we started crying we wouldn’t be able to stop. So, if you have been a little hard on yourself for what you could not do, give yourself a break. You may have been executing your programming perfectly.

It may sound a little harsh and inhuman to say that you were programmed, but if you follow the analogy, you might find it helpful in allowing you to change. At the very least, if you can see how well you executed the incorrect things you learned, you will see that you can also execute correct things with great precision.

I don't think it is entirely possibleto maintain crying all the time at some point you have to stop and recharge. However, I have seen too many people here on the forum avoid trying to help themselves by getting help because of an inordinate fear of any expression of their sad, painful, or negative feelings. This all comes down to a matter of choice.. and if you're getting some kind of a payoff from not willing to help yourself up..

We experience only as much sadness as is necessary for our feelings to adjust as far as they can at any one time, then the feeling stops.

When we have become used to that amount of change and loss, the unconscious lets us feel a bit more, and so on, until we have fully absorbed the whole significance of the loss. By the same token, when grief does stop, there is no need to feel guilty that we didn't care enough.

Some people actually feel guilty about feeling all right so soon after a loss, and they have to understand that they are simply being well looked after by their unconscious mind.

The trouble with heartbreak, however, is that the natural process of grief does not always work properly. People can get stuck, repeating the same painful feelings over and over again..The pain must be released ... you cannot keep it locked up where it will fester and destroy from within... Some people may actually become used to feeling that misery.. afraid to let it go because they have become comfortable in their pain... afraid to move on and become paralyzed to try and help themselves

They need to try seek help if they feel can't do it alone... They can also try to read, research, try to find direction on their own... to start to heal from your loss. Everything in this life moves in cycles .. "We were never meant to be miserable for our entire lives"..

Thank you for taking time to read this..........

I will wish you peace to your troubled heart and clarity of thought in the morass.

Cal821

__________________
Memory can only tell us what we were,
in the company of those we loved;
it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become.
Yet no person is really alone;
those who live no more echo still within our thoughts and words,
and what they did has become woven into what we are.

hi dave thankyou for this it's a good thread especially for those stuck in a phase of their recovery sometimes it causes guilt to feel they are adapting to their life and being able to laugh and live again recovery from such heartache will always come to those that want it eventually love hazelxx

__________________
Memory can only tell us what we were,
in the company of those we loved;
it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become.
Yet no person is really alone;
those who live no more echo still within our thoughts and words,
and what they did has become woven into what we are.